St. Aug controversy awaits new leader of religious society that founded school

Some time Tuesday, selected Josephite priests representing fewer than 100 colleagues across the country will gather at the order’s St. Joseph Seminary in northeast Washington, D.C., and elect a new superior general for their community in a vote with substantial implications for New Orleans.

View full sizeTed Jackson, The Times-PicayuneA suit of armor stands guard in the entrance of St. Augustine High School next to a flag emblazoned with the Josephites seal.

Beyond the usual challenges of managing declining finances and vocations, the Josephites’ new superior general will have to tackle an acute, unprecedented crisis: how to settle an internal conflict over who is the rightful president at St. Augustine High School, the crown jewel in the Josephites’ educational world.

And that, in turn, may alter the future of St. Augustine, widely respected in New Orleans for decades for creating an atmosphere of academic and moral rigor that churned out disproportionate numbers of civic, business and professional leaders.

The Rev. Joe Campion, a former St. Augustine chaplain and now the pastor at St. Francis of Assisi Parish, a Josephite parish in Breaux Bridge, said he did not think that discussion of the situation at St. Augustine is on the formal Washington agenda, which is vetted months in advance.

“But this is such an overarching issue, I can’t imagine this won’t be addressed,” he said.

“St. Aug is our bragging point, the lamp set out on a hill, the shining light in all that the Josephites do.”

In one of his last acts as superior general, the Rev. Edward Chiffriller on June 4 abruptly removed the Rev. John Raphael as St. Augustine’s president and appointed a Josephite pastor, the Rev. Charles Andrus, as interim president.

View full sizeTed Jackson, The Times-PicayuneThe St. Aug High School student handbook includes the history of the Josephites' role in the school.

Within days, however, the school’s local board of directors announced that only it had the power to employ the president, and that Raphael had accepted the board's offer to remain on the job.

The Josephites responded by altering their governing relationship with the school in a way that reasserted Raphael’s dismissal.

Raphael released an email message last week saying a canon lawyer had advised him that Chiffriller’s dismissal order is “canonically invalid.”

Technically, the Josephites are not a religious order, but a slightly different organization in the Catholic church called a society of apostolic life.

According to Campion, a Josephite priest since 1991, while Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans and members of similar religious orders take solemn vows that include a vow of obedience, Josephites, by virtue of their community’s different status, do not make “vows” of obedience to a superior general. Instead, they “promise” to adhere to the constitutions governing the community’s life.

Societies are more recent types of organizations in the Catholic church, and “sometimes they have more freedom (than religious orders) in how they handle situations,” said the Rev. Sean Sheridan, a canon lawyer on the faculty of Catholic University of America.

Still, it was not immediately clear Monday what processes are available to Raphael and the Josephites to settle their dispute, or how soon they can be employed.

The community’s spokesman in Baltimore has been unavailable; a person at the community’s headquarters in Baltimore said Josephites attending the general conference could not receive messages.

View full sizeA story and photo published in The Times-Picayune on August 27, 1951.

Troy Henry, the chairman of the St. Augustine High School board, has said Tuesday’s election and its potential change in leadership offer the best chance for resolving the hardened stand-off between the Josephite leadership in Baltimore and, in New Orleans, Raphael — himself a St. Augustine alumnus — and what appears to be the solid backing of local parents and the corps of alumni.

Nominally the disagreement is over St. Augustine’s traditional use of corporal punishment. Archbishop Gregory Aymond and the Josephite leadership want it stopped. The Josephites suspended it for the 2010-11 school year, over the objections of Raphael, the local board, parents and alumni.

But now the paddling dispute has given rise to accusations that Aymond and the Josephite founders have displayed an air of paternalism and lack of respect for Raphael, the St. Augustine tradition and the school community of parents and alumni.

In New Orleans that tradition goes back 60 years.

Among religious communities that have served New Orleans, the Josephites are far younger than the Ursuline nuns, who arrived in colonial New Orleans when it was still not much more than an encampment surrounded by a timber fence.

And they are far fewer than the Jesuits, who just in the Southeast United States outnumber all the Josephites in the country about 2 to 1, according to the 2009 Catholic Directory.

Founded in the late 19th century by white British priests who left their American missionary society explicitly to minister to newly freed slaves, the Josephites mainly run predominantly African-American parishes across the American South.

Their website lists 38 parishes in eight states and the District of Columbia. Those works include six elementary schools, the Josephite seminary, and, in New Orleans, St. Augustine High School.

The Josephites also administer five parishes around New Orleans.

During their time here, Josephite priests and St. Augustine parents have been civil rights pioneers, pushing for change inside and outside the church.

The Rev. Eugene McManus, a St. Augustine priest and later a superior general, was one of a handful of insiders who vigorously lobbied Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel to desegregate parochial schools in the early 1960s.

And St. Augustine was a prime mover in desegregating prep sports under the Louisiana High School Athletic Association.

Raphael and others have said they view their defense of St. Augustine’s traditions — even given the disapproval of Josephite allies — as another example of resistance to perceived injustice.

Meanwhile, Campion said Tuesday’s leadership election in Washington will proceed rather like a papal conclave.

Ordinarily there are no announced candidates, no overt campaigning, no published platforms.